


skinny love, just last the year.

by theamazingpeterparker



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Drabble, M/M, New York City, One Shot, Valentine's Day, niall and harry enjoy valentines day a little too much, zayn is indifferent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theamazingpeterparker/pseuds/theamazingpeterparker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn doesn't like Valentine's Day. Niall gives flowers to random people on the street.</p>
            </blockquote>





	skinny love, just last the year.

**Author's Note:**

> i got this idea in my head that Niall and Harry definitely love valentines day and do everything in their power to make everyone else love it, too. so. this happened.  
> Title from Skinny Love by Bon Iver.

Zayn doesn’t _hate_ Valentines Day, really. He just thinks it’s not really…necessary. In a place like New York City, the holiday is either being full-out celebrated or ignored completely, and he’s the type to ignore it. He takes a longer route to work to avoid the tourists in Times Square or Central Park, lovebirds on benches and delivery boys scrambling through streets on bikes to deliver teddy bears and flowers and chocolates. It’s cute, Zayn guesses, if he was the lovey type. If he was the lovey type, New York City would be the best place to be. But he’s just trying to get the work, and he doesn’t need to maneuver around couples holding hands or street vendors trying to sell him half-wilted roses, thank you very much. In fact, Zayn just _looks_ like the epitome of misery on his way to work, hunched in his hoodie and leather jacket, bustling as quickly as he can around anyone in his way. Zayn’s never been the type to openly state his opinions on Valentine’s Day, but there’s a general consensus from everyone in his life that he probably hates it, and he doesn’t bother telling them otherwise. But he gets it. He gets that it’s a day for people to be as emotional as they want without judgment. He doesn’t complain about it to Louis, doesn’t dread the day when it approaches on his calendar. It’s just another day (albeit, a day where he drinks more than usual, but still. Just another day).

The most painful part of the day is his work. He tried desperately switching shifts so he wouldn’t have to come in today, but instead here he is, flipping the tattoo shop’s sign to OPEN and watching people pour into the waiting area. His boss had the genius idea to offer $14 tattoos for Valentine’s Day, and most people in line are young college couples asking for matching hearts on their wrists or spontaneous tourists asking if the shop is sanitized and safe. After the first four hours of convincing tourists that yes, each needle is sanitized and new, and tattooing “fuck love” in a heart on some punk kid from Brooklyn, Zayn takes his usual smoke and coffee break, fingers and back aching from tattooing hunched over for the whole afternoon.

He’s two blocks down at his usual Starbucks, clutching a heart-covered paper cup of black coffee in one inky hand and a smoldering Marlboro in the other when there’s pounding footsteps crossing the street, and Zayn looks up to see a mop of blond hair and a wild grin sprinting across the crosswalk, carrying an armful of roses. Zayn stands up straighter against the building, hoping to give the kid as much room as possible to run by, but instead he stops directly in front of Zayn and thrusts the roses at him. Zayn barely has time to register the exchange; he’s already dropped his cigarette, arms going up instinctively to hold the flowers, and the kid’s eyes are twinkling blue and bright, the grin on his face getting bigger with his flushed red cheeks and heaving chest. He’s got a shirt on that says “I LOVE YOU” in big red letters, and it’s stained with dirt and smears of red from the rose petals. He looks absolutely frazzled and absolutely joyful.

“Happy Valentines Day!” the kid says loudly (and, okay, realistically, the kid is probably around Zayn’s age, but he’s writhing with excitement and joy and he just seems so _young)_ before sprinting off down the block.

Zayn watches until the blond hair is lost in the steady stream of people on the sidewalk, still holding this large bouquet of roses that he has absolutely no idea what to do with or where they came from. He throws out his coffee and ducks inside for a table, determined to find out who’s behind this. Louis, maybe. Louis knows that Zayn goes to this Starbucks every day. Or maybe Jade at the reception of the shop, though Jade doesn’t seem like the type who would fuck with Zayn on his least favorite holiday. He hunts through the thorny flowers for a note, or a company sticker, or anything that would tell him who sent these flowers or where they came from. He doesn’t find anything. It’s just a regular bouquet of what’s probably two dozen flowers wrapped in a white polka-dot plastic. He only considers throwing them out for a moment—maybe the blond guy just made a mistake, thinking Zayn was someone else. So… maybe Zayn should hold onto them. Zayn’s already got an outline of a rose tattooed on his own hip, it feels like it would be treasonous to get rid of a free bundle of roses given to him by some stranger on the street. He buries his nose in one of them and inhales—they’re real, delicate petals tickling his nose and the thorns threatening to poke at his palms through the plastic. And maybe these flowers weren’t meant for _him_ , but maybe the fact that _somebody_ gave him flowers today is enough to brighten Zayn’s mood the tiniest bit and maybe, if he secretly starts to think that maybe Valentine’s Day isn’t so bad after all, well. Nobody has to know.

Jade only smirks at him when he comes stomping back into the shop and hour later to finish his shift, and he shoots her a playful smile. “Thanks for the roses, Jade, but you didn’t have to send some kid to chase me down in order to deliver them.”

“Not from me, boss,” she chirps, raising her eyebrows. “What happened?”

Zayn dumps the bouquet on the front desk and manages to find an empty fishbowl that’s usually used for tips, and fills it with the rest of his water bottle before stuffing the roses into the glass. “Some crazy blond dude ran up and threw them at me, said happy valentines day, and ran off.”

“Secret admirer?” the receptionist asks with a smile, obviously enjoying Zayn’s confusion about the whole situation. Zayn shoots her a look and tells her to get back to work.

At least the rest of the day isn’t a drag. Zayn’s kept busy for the rest of his shift, making small-talk with customers while he inks pink and red hearts and roses and arrows onto them, and by the end of the day, his tip jar is stuffed to the brim. When he shrugs on his jacket and starts out to the lobby to head home, Jade clicks her tongue at him and says, “You gotta take these.”

Zayn turns around to see her tapping the fish bowl of flowers with her pen, and he feels his face drop into a pout. “Why?”

“They’re obstructing my view. If my view is obstructed, I can’t properly assist customers. If I can’t properly assist customers, I will be fired. If I am fired, nobody will be here to control the customers. If nobody is here to control the customers, they’ll mob you for tattoos and you’ll get fired. Don’t let your roses get me fired.”

“You take them. Happy Valentine’s Day, Jade,” Zayn tries, still trying to inch towards the door.

Jade throws his pen at him. “Zayn Malik! Take these flowers off my desk, _now_. I don’t care if you burn them or water them or eat them, but I don’t want them on my desk.”

Zayn raises his eyebrows in mock-surprise at her outburst, but still goes over and gathers the fishbowl in his arms and sticks his tongue out at her before pushing the door open and out of the shop.

Zayn doesn’t really consider the weight of the fishbowl, water and roses until he's walking, and now has to carry 10 blocks back to his apartment, and again he briefly considers throwing them out or leaving them on the street. Like, they’re just _flowers_. They don’t have feelings, they won’t feel bad if he dumps them in the nearest trashcan and carries on with the rest of his night….right?

“Fuck,” he hisses, because fuck him for feeling guilty about a bouquet of goddamn _roses_. If it wasn’t _Valentines Day_ , for fuck’s sake, maybe he wouldn’t feel so bad. It’s just the whole _concept_ of the thing. Is this what normal people have to put up with every year? Carrying flowers around and acting like they’re important?

Zayn’s still considering the best way to get rid of these flowers without actually ruining them when he stumbles across the street and finds himself standing under a sign for a shop called _Flower Styles_ , and in some desperate attempt to fix his dilemma, he wrestles his way into the shop with his fish bowl. Maybe they can, like, just take them off his hands. Do flower shops do that? Adopt abandoned flowers?

“Can I help….you?” A voice asks, faultering off when they see the disheveled, leather-clad guy trip his way into the shop with an armful of roses and a look of desperation on his face. Zayn makes a beeline for the counter where the curly-haired boy is watching him with a small, tilted smile on his face.

“Hi. Yeah. Uh. Can you take these?” Zayn asks, dropping the fishbowl on the counter and finally looking the guy in the eye. His nametag says _Harry_ , with a little sticker of a daisy next to it, and Harry reaches forward and touches one of the rose petals.

“I thought touching the petals made them wilt?” Zayn says weakly, and why does he _care_? Why does he care if this Harry character wilts every rose in the bouquet? Why does he care about these flowers?

“Yeah,” Harry says wistfully, like he’s not fully paying attention to Zayn. Zayn’s about to repeat his request when Harry’s eyes snap to his, green and sharp and clear when he speaks again, “why don’t you want them? Some girl broke your heart?”

“No, I just…” Zayn’s excuse seems completely lame, all of the sudden. _I just don’t want to carry them all the way home_. “I was wondering…if you had a smaller vase?”

Harry perks up and nods, turning to unlock a glass case full of bowls and vases, and he starts pulling out skinner, more practical containers as compared to Zayn’s fish bowl.

“Do flower shops adopt unwanted flowers?” Zayn can’t help but ask, and Harry gives him a skeptical look and replies, “Dude. What do you have against roses?”

“Nothing!” Zayn says, throwing his arms up in defeat. “It’s just, some random kid gave these to me today without any explanation whatsoever, and I guess the gesture was nice and all, but I don’t know if they were meant for someone else and I don’t even have a proper place to put them and today has just been very confusing so—“

“Hey, Harry, do you have any other…” comes a voice that cuts Zayn off from his rant, and from the back room of the shop emerges the blond kid from the street. Zayn’s face drops into confusion the same moment that he blond guy’s face breaks into a radiant grin.

“ _Hey!_ You’re the guy from the Starbucks corner!” The kid says happily, sticking a hand out over the counter and shouldering Harry out of the way. “I’m Niall.”

“Niall. Okay. Niall, I’m Zayn, and I wanted to, like….I don’t mean any offense, really, but I think you mistook me for someone else, or something, but I’m trying to find somewhere to give these flowers, and like…did you even know who I am?”

Niall’s smile hasn’t faltered at all during Zayn’s rambling, and if Zayn wasn’t so distressed about the roses, he’d probably try to get Niall’s number. “Of course I know who you are,” Niall sniffs as he starts putting the flowers into a skinny vase, “You’re the hot, brooding guy from the Starbucks corner who looked like he needed some cheering up. And now I know your name is Zayn.” he flashes Zayn a smirk before going back to arranging the roses.

Zayn must look like he’s about to cry out of confusion, so Harry steps forward and adds, “It’s Valentines Day, Mr. Zayn. Everyone should get flowers of Valentines Day, yeah? So Every year, Niall and I make up bouquets and give them to random people on the streets. I try to keep it to people who look sad, but Niall always gives it to the cutest people he sees, _ow_ ,” Harry hops over a bit and gives Niall a glare after there was a muted _thud_ behind the counter.

Zayn rubs his face hard. There’s a bottle of whiskey and carton of left-over Chinese food calling his name from his apartment, and he really just wants to go home. “I’m sorry. I’m just…can you take the flowers back, then?”

“No can do, tiger,” Niall says, still smiling as he drums his fingers on the counter. “See, I’m like Cupid. If Cupid gives you something, you don’t question it. It’s the day of love, Zayn, don’t look so grumpy. That means my job has failed.”

Harry nudges Niall out of the way and completes the arrangement of roses in their new home, and slides them towards Zayn. “Free vase, for all your suffering,” he drawls. Niall is watching him with a steady look, still smirking, but his bright eyes are challenging Zayn to just _try_ to deny the flowers again. So instead, Zayn gathers about a dozen of his roses, pulls them out of the carefully-arranged vase, and plops them back in the fishbowl.

“What if I gave Cupid something?” Zayn asks as he pushes half of the roses towards Niall.

 Both of the boys grin at each other and Harry snorts a laugh and Niall asks, “Zayn, would you like to get a drink with me?”

“Do I have to carry the roses?”

Niall contemplates it before reaching out and grabbing one of the roses, handing it over to Zayn. “Just this one.”

“You’ve got yourself a date, Cupid.”

Niall throws Harry an ecstatic look before vaulting over the counter and hooking his arm though Zayn’s, his smile brighter than ever. “You know, I think that most people I give flowers to just throw them out.”

“You know, I couldn’t throw them out,” Zayn admits as Niall drags them out the door and onto the street. “I felt guilty.”

“Good,” Niall laughs, and the sound rings out, sharp and sure, and Zayn feels himself smile. “Anyone who can’t bring themselves to throw out fresh flowers is good in my book.”

“You’re kind of strange, Niall,” Zayn tells the boy quietly, but he squeezes his elbow and Niall laughs again and Zayn thinks that maybe he wants to hear Niall laugh like this every day.

“You’re the one who can’t throw out flowers,” Niall shoots back, and Zayn manages to glare at him for all of five seconds before he laughs, too. “You’re all bad-ass and smoking and bad-boyish, but you can’t throw out _roses_.”

“I have a tattoo of a rose,” Zayn explains softly, and he feels a blush rising on his face when Niall unhooks their arms and twines their fingers together instead. “It would be, like, blasphemy to get rid of them.”

Niall shakes his head and chuckles, tightening his hand in Zayn’s when he pulls him across the street. “Hey, Zayn.”

Zayn hums in response, looking up at the endless skyscrapers above them and wondering how, twelve hours ago, he was trying to get through today as quickly as possible and now, with his random boy next to him, he wants to take his time with the rest of the night.

“I’m happy I decided to force my two dozen roses on you today,” Niall tells him with a quick smile, and this time, it’s Zayn who laughs.

Zayn replies, “Me too, Niall,” and if he secretly starts thinking that today has been the best day of his year so far, well.  Nobody has to know.

 


End file.
